CORONAVIRUS - HOMEWORKING - 25.06.2020

Homeworking cuts carbon

Changing working practices that were forced by the coronavirus pandemic have shown that homeworking can bring significant financial and environmental benefits for employers. What’s to know?

Cost savings

Encouraging more of your staff to continue to work from home after the coronavirus pandemic will save your business money and help to reduce your overall carbon footprint.

In fact, according to the Carbon Trust, homeworking has the potential to save UK firms £3 billion per year in costs, whilst cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3m tonnes of carbon annually (if all workers stayed at home). Faster broadband, smartphone technology and cloud-based computing systems have made it easier than ever to get staff set up to work from anywhere. Already around 4m people out of a total workforce of 30m now work at home.

Employee benefits

According to a Carbon Trust study, more than 40% of us have jobs that can be done at home. But only 35% of companies have a policy allowing staff to work from home - and where it is offered as an option, between one third and half of people choose not to take it up. But your staff could be losing out on big savings.

Data from a travel survey suggests that by working from home two days per week for a year, on average, staff could save 50 hours of commuting time and £450, if you factor in travel costs. They could also reduce their personal carbon footprint by 390kg of CO2 e. A person’s typical footprint is around ten tonnes of CO2 e.

Note. CO2 e stands for carbon dioxide equivalent and is a standard unit used for measuring carbon footprints. It includes emissions of other gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and f-gases.

Should you offer homeworking?

Once more staff return to the office, you will probably have to stagger or limit the number of people working together. This will be easier to achieve if you encourage them to work from home two to three days per week.

Tip. Talk to your staff about what they prefer. Flexibility over working hours can give people a better work/life.

Note. As for the carbon savings, homeworking strategies are only deemed to be a success if you have measured the impact of commuting by all staff. Do some simple calculations and explain to staff and customers what positive impact homeworking is having on your environmental impact as a business.

Watch your space

Homeworking also enables you to reduce your office footprint. With fewer people in the office at any one time, you won’t need as many desks or as much space. You can calculate what office space you need by first looking at the area used per workspace. This is generally 10-12 m2 and can be calculated by dividing the net internal area of your office by the number of desks. Then, you can count desk utilisation by adding up the number of desks that are unoccupied (no bags or coat), temporarily unoccupied (coat or bags at the desk) and occupied - a counting process that should continue over a few weeks at different times and days. By increasing desk occupancy from 65% to 80%, a typical office with 100 people could move from a 2,500m2 office space to one that is 2,050m2 without feeling uncomfortable, according to Carbon Trust.

According to the Carbon Trust, homeworking has the potential to save UK firms £3bn per year and cut carbon emissions significantly. You can reduce office space and save on heating costs, whilst staff will save on commuting time and travel costs. Personal and business carbon footprints will be reduced as a result.

© Indicator - FL Memo Ltd

Tel.: (01233) 653500 • Fax: (01233) 647100

subscriptions@indicator-flm.co.ukwww.indicator-flm.co.uk

Calgarth House, 39-41 Bank Street, Ashford, Kent TN23 1DQ

VAT GB 726 598 394 • Registered in England • Company Registration No. 3599719